73TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)READING 30. 2
Science and Technology
CHAPTER 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style 73Book5 73beverage.The Chinese had used narcoticopium for cen-
turies, but as a result of the new arrangement large quan-
tities of the drug—harvested in India—were exported
directly to China.In exchange, the Chinese shipped tea to
Britain.Opium addiction became anincreasingly severe
social problem in China. Following the opium-related
death of the Chinese emperor’s son, the Chinese made
every effort to restrict theimportation of the drug and
stem the activities of opium smugglers (Figure 30. 2 ).
British merchants refused to cooperate.The result was a
series of wars between Britain and China (the Opium
Wars, 1839– 1850) that brought China toits knees.In
1839,just prior to the first of these wars, the Chinese com-
missioner Lin Zexu (1785–1850) sent a detailed communi-
cation to the British queen pleading for Britain’s assistance
in ending opium smuggling and trade.Whether or not
Queen Victoria ever read Lin’s letteris unknown, but the
document remains a literary tribute to the futile efforts of
a great Asian civilization to achieve peace through diplo-
macyin the age ofimperialism.From Lin Zexu’sLetter of Advice
to Queen Victoria(1839)
.. .The kings of your honorable country by a tradition handed 1
down from generation to generation have always been noted
for their politeness and submissiveness. We have read your
successive tributary memorials saying, “In general our
countrymen who go to trade in China have always received His
Majesty the Emperor’s gracious treatment and equal justice,”
and so on. Privately we are delighted with the way in which the
honorable rulers of your country deeply understand the grand
principles and are grateful for the Celestial grace. For this
reason the Celestial Court in soothing those from afar has 10
redoubled its polite and kind treatment. The profit from trade
has been enjoyed by them continuously for two hundred years.
This is the source from which your country has become known
for its wealth.
But after a long period of commercial intercourse, there
appear among the crowd of barbarians both good persons and
bad, unevenly. Consequently there are those who smuggle
opium to seduce the Chinese people and so cause the spread of
the poison to all provinces. Such persons who only care to profit
themselves, and disregard their harm to others, are not 20
populations. The partitioning of Africa began in 1830 with
the French conquest of Algeria (in the north). In the
decades thereafter, Belgium laid claim to the Congo, and
the Dutch and the British fought each other for control of
South Africa—both nations savagely wresting land from
the Zulu and other African peoples.
A century-long series of brutal wars with the Asante
Empire in West Africa left the British in control of the
Gold Coast, while the conquest of the Sudan in 1898
saw 11,000 Muslims killed by British machine guns (the
British themselves lost twenty-eight men). Profit-seeking
European companies leased large tracts of African land
from which native goods such as rubber, diamonds, and
gold might be extracted; and increasingly Africans were
forced to work on white-owned plantations and mines.
The seeds of racism and mutual contempt were sown in
this troubled era, an era that predictably spawned modern
liberation movements, such as those calling for pan-
Islamic opposition to colonialism (see chapter 36).
By the mid nineteenth century, the United States (itself
a colony of Britain until 1776) had joined the scramble for
economic control.America forced Japan to openits doors to
Western tradein 1853.This event, which marked the end of
Japan’s seclusion, usheredin the overthrow of the Tokugawa
regime (see chapter 21) and marked the beginning of
Japanese modernization under Meijirule (1858–1912).In
the Western hemisphere, the United States establishedits
own overseas empire.
North Americans used the phrase“manifest destiny”to
describe andjustify a policy of unlimited expansioninto the
American West, Mexico, and elsewhere.The end result was
the United States’acquisition of more than half of Mexico,
control of the Philippines and Cuba, and a dominant posi-
tionin the economies of the politically unstable nations of
Latin America.Although Westerners rationalized their
militant expansionism by contending that they were
“civilizing”the backward peoples of the globe,in fact their
diplomatic policies contributed to undermining cultural
traditions, to humiliating and often enfeebling the civiliza-
tions they dominated, and to creating conditions of eco-
nomic dependency that would last wellinto the twentieth
century (see chapter 36).China and the West
The nineteenth century marked
the end of China’s long history as
anindependent civilization.The
European powers, along with
Russia and Japan, carved out
trade concessions inChina.Subsequent trade policies,
which took advantage of China’s traditionally negative
view of profit-taking, delayed any potential Chinese
initiative towardindustrialization.
More devastating still was the triangular trade pattern
inopium and tea between India, China, and Britain.
Established by Britainin the early nineteenth century,
trade policy worked to stem the tide of British gold and
silver that flowed to China to buy tea, a favorite British1844 Samuel Morse (American) transmits the first
telegraph message
1866 the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable
is laid
1869 the first American transcontinental railroad
is completed
1875 Alexander Graham Bell (Scottish) produces the first
functional telephone in AmericaBK5_001-141.indd 73BK5_001-141.indd 73 04/12/2009 8:55 AM04/12/2009 8:55 AM